(calm music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hello everyone and welcome to the February edition of "Black Nouveau", I'm Earl Arms.

February, of course is Black History Month, and while we celebrate African American history, heritage, and achievement every month here on "Black Nouveau", we hope you'll take advantage of some of the many activities and events celebrating the contributions of our ancestors that'll be taking place in the community.

Milwaukee PBS will be offering two documentaries about local issues and history that we'll preview for you.

Donzaleigh Abernathy, the daughter of the late Dr.

Ralph Abernathy and goddaughter of the Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was the keynote speaker at the MATC MLK Day celebration.

We'll share with you her memories of the Civil Rights Movement.

But we begin with the history of the Black press in Milwaukee.

Before the beginning of the 20th century, there were less than 1000 African-Americans living in Wisconsin.

So of course there were not many Black-owned newspapers here in the state.

One of the earliest was a Wisconsin Afro-American, which was started in 1892.

Several years earlier, George Edwin Taylor published a Wisconsin Labor Advocate for workers of all races.

Today, there are four surviving Black newspapers, The Madison Times, The Milwaukee Times, The Milwaukee Courier, and The Milwaukee Community Journal.

This year The Community Journal is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and James Causey, who started his professional journalism career at The Community Journal has more.

- For nearly 50 years, Milwaukee's largest African-American newspaper, The Milwaukee Community Journal, has remained steadfast in its mission to advocate for the Black community and to provide coverage that traditional media often overlooks.

- The main ones that they focused on was basically who shot who, where and when, and why.

You know, that's why one of the reasons we don't do crime stories from the standpoint of who shot who, because we know that there is more to our community than just being a shooting gallery.

When we do report on crime, we do it from the standpoint of statistics.

Has crime gone up, gone down?

What's the reasons for it?

What solutions are there that should be utilized in order to bring it down even further?

- What are some of the obstacles that you face?

- The last 10 years have been rough, we had COVID to deal with, we managed to stay relevant and stay, you know, in business.

Through that we felt that we were one of the essentials that our community needed, share the information about the disease and about where to go in order to get tested to get shots, share information about the aspects of it that people should be aware of.

What we need, I think is a bit more support, dollar support.

Michael and I were talking a little earlier about Black billionaires.

One of the correspondence for the NNPA wrote something rather scathing about Black billionaires not supporting the Black media that had been instrumental in getting their own careers going and we need more support from our own people and I think there's also this question of what is considered news by our people.

You see the whole thing about, I know online, you know, the gossip type things he said, she said, and people fighting and arguing and holding beef and stuff like that, that's one aspect of it, but there's more to news, you know, than that.

I kinda like say it's, you know, like a meal, instead of getting the meat, potatoes, and the vegetables, which is basically the truth and the facts and statistics, we're settling for dessert.

They're thinking that that's going to nourish us.

We'd rather deal with the dessert, get the cheesecake and skip the meal, you know, and I think that's the part that I think we in the Black press have to figure out what do our people think of as news?

Because now with the phone and being able to get information, some of it good, some of it bad, we have to try to find a balance where we can still be relevant and get the information and the knowledge out there, but still be attractive enough that people will pick us up.

- [James] One person who brings the meat and potatoes is longtime columnist Michael Holt, who spent his entire career at The Community Journal.

He talks about his latest signifying column on businesses fleeing the inner city.

- Some columns are harder to put together than others.

I might start on a column on a Friday and the deadline is supposed to be Monday, he'll get it on Wednesday morning.

Other columns are easy.

For example, this week's column focuses on the city being a food desert.

But then I take it a step further and touch on all the major national brands who have left the Central city.

And even the numerous, like Chick-fil-A, all of their restaurants are in the suburbs.

Walmarts have closed, two of them in Central City, and I hear there's a third one on the chopping block.

Walgreens, CVS, Pick 'n Save, the latest being at Aldi in Sherman Boulevard.

So we are being divested slowly but surely.

- What do you think people don't understand about the Black press and Black newspapers?

- We value consistency in the community.

Every year we showed the Juneteenth pictures, the celebration pictures, with the exception of this year, Salvation Army Christmas Dinner, is consistency.

People look to us to present those tried and true traditions within Black Milwaukee that they depend on and they look forward to and I think that's the thing that they don't understand it.

Yeah, we'll cover the same person again and again or the same events every year because it is part of who we are as a people in this city, and it's important to us and so we have to let people know that these things are still going on and that it's still relevant and still important to us.

- [James] What would you tell a young college student, a Black college student right now in J-School about possibly getting their start with a Black newspaper?

- You would've an opportunity to change the world.

- There are young people out here who are aware, who are, you know, in tune with what's going on.

And as far as them being in this business, just keep reading, keep listening, keep watching news, learn to write because even if it's, you know, on a camera, you still have to know how to write, you still have to know how to articulate and explain to people what's going on and why this is important.

This is probably a time where because everything is now being shot live, think this could be become a new age of activism and we've already seen it like you mentioned with Floyd, you know, showing people what's going on in real time and then getting it out to the rest of the country, you know, before the traditional news can do something with it and having people then comment about what they see and then report those comments.

I mean, this already happening now, but I think we in the Black press have to get caught up immediately and start doing the same thing.

We have the examples like Roland Martin and Joy Reid and Don Lemon, they're the examples.

All we have to do is just use their template, maybe adjust it for our audience and be able to push it out there for and I think that's the best way to reach 'em.

(upbeat music) - Kids who are hungry can't learn.

Kids who've experienced violence every day, they're not gonna be able to come in and concentrate on math.

(upbeat music) I'm trying to rescue as many children as I can.

The poor Black and Brown children, they are not a priority and we ought to quit lying about that.

(upbeat music) - She was born enslaved in St.

Louis, Missouri, as the property of her grandfather, a white male in 1826.

She was an octoroon, so she was an eighth Black.

She was blue-eyed, fair skin, high cheekbone.

But she kept hearing these tales of freedom because the family she was born into was Revolutionary War.

So in 1843, 4th of July comes, this Revolutionary War family is celebrating freedom and left her home to wash the paints.

Before they left, she asked a question, "You know I've got a friend that's sick, and can I while the family's... I'll go down and visit my friend."

And she went down and told her friend she was leaving, "I'm outta here."

(bush rustling) So she walked to the ferry dock and literally bought a ticket and she just kind of melded into the, what was going on on the ferry boat that would take her to Galena that's further down the river.

It's there that she got off and bought a ticket to the stage coach to the furthest place that she could figure out that she thought she'd be safe and it ended up being Milwaukee.

When she arrived a couple weeks later, she had a $600 tag on her head.

(tense music) (bush rustling) And in about a month's time, here comes all the folks looking for her.

(tense music) (door thudding) The City of Milwaukee gathered themselves together and said she is not going back.

So when they started knocking door to door asking people questions and everybody's like, "Well, I don't know.

I don't know what you're talking about."

Asahel Finch was well-known attorney around town.

Asahel Finch was an abolitionist.

Mr.

Finch sent someone to go find her and bring her back to him and then he hid her in plain sight as they would say, as the story goes in a sugar barrel with a lid on it in the middle of July.

And she was hidden there because at the end of the night, Mr.

Finch had a plan to take her and get her somewhere safer which is what he did.

They put her on a horseback and took her to Samuel Brown.

She was hidden overnight by Deacon Brown.

Got to daylight and he decided, "Well, she obviously can't stay here."

So he put her on horseback out to the outskirts, Waukesha, the surrounding areas of Burlington.

And we were trying to decide, "Well, what do we do?"

So after deciding that the man who was gonna do it was Lyman Goodnow, they entrusted her to him and off the road they went around South of Chicago through Indiana and then into Detroit, crossed the river to Windsor.

And as it turns out, she had finally made it home.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Those pictures are just some of the food waiting to be sampled at the Flavors of Africa & Diaspora in Wisconsin being held on February 22nd, 2026.

And here to tell us more about the event is Yollande Tchouapi, Ubuntu MKE Founder.

Welcome to "Black Nouveau".

Thanks for coming.

- Oh, thank you so much for having me, Earl.

- Absolutely.

- How are you?

- I'm doing well, thank you so much.

Talk about this event that you're doing and why it's so important.

- Flavor of Africa & Diaspora in Wisconsin is an event that really bring the community together and we are at a time where we feel as a community a bit divided for various reason and we felt that we could combine the love of culture, the love of community, the love of food into an event that showcase where we Native African came from and share and connect our community here in Milwaukee with, and also unite the community in the process 'cause food is a uniter, right?

There's conversation pieces that come around just sharing a meal, getting to know one another, getting above and beyond our differences.

I mean, we all agree that we all need to eat and eating good food.

- And this has been going on now, what?

Three years now?

- Three years.

- Okay.

- Three years where we're sharing with the community a piece of us.

So a lot of us Native African living in town have always felt the need to connect with our, you know, brothers and sisters living here so bridging the gap called African American, but we're all part of one people.

So being able to share with our brothers and sisters where they came from and sharing that culture with them from the perspective of Native, not only connect us as people, but it's also share a lot that I think our brothers and sisters have been trying to really understand, understand the culture, the food, and understand our journey and our story and that story is not always told from our perspective.

- So talk about more of this event, what people can expect to see in the time that we have.

- This is amazing.

I mean, this is a one exclusive event in town where you get to sample the food, you get to hear the music, you get to see dances that are native of Africa.

So Nigeria, we have the Nigerian masquerade that will be there, the Cameroonian masquerade, and this year we're actually inviting the Kinyarwanda tribe that's gonna be performing in Milwaukee for the first time.

People get to sample now food of different region across the African continent and we added Caribbean and Latin America because we have diaspora in the Caribbean mostly and in Latin America.

- And if people wanna be a part of it, where can they find more information?

- They can find information on ubuntumke.com, which is our website, or Flavor Africa & Diaspora Wisconsin and we look forward to having everybody there, it's gonna be an amazing event.

- Alright, Yollande, thank you so much for joining us.

- You're amazing, thank you for having me.

(upbeat music) - [Host] Donzaleigh Abernathy, the daughter of the late Civil Rights activist, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, delivered a keynote speech at MATC's celebration, held in honor of her godfather, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr's birthday.

She spoke about her father and godfather reflecting on their pivotal roles in the inception of the Civil Rights movement.

- Those are my guys, that's my daddy and that's Uncle Martin.

Yeah, my dad was a soldier, and he graduated from high school when he was 16, Uncle Martin graduated when he was 15.

And daddy was drafted into the war and developed rheumatic fever when they were in the European theater and David was his real name.

He just signed in as Ralph when he was enrolled.

And what happened was, because he developed rheumatic fever when they were leaving France and went to England, they put him in the hospital there in England and they shipped the rest of the Black soldiers off to the islands off of the Coast of Japan where everybody was killed.

My dad said that they died defending American democracy, yet would've been denied the right to come back to the United States of American and enjoy that same democracy that they had fought and died for.

And because my dad survived and one of the soldiers survived, he had something called survivor's remorse, the same thing he would have when he lost Uncle Martin.

And therefore he decided to dedicate his life to a noble cause.

So that's daddy being a pastor, Uncle Martin being a pastor, and they believe that they were called by God to do something honorable in their lives and they were.

And this is Uncle Martin at Crozer Theological Seminary and there he is in the middle, and you see he had this inner light inside of him.

Some of us are average people, but Uncle Martin was sort of special, he had that something, something so that when he would come into a room, you just automatically turned and you looked at him because of the way he was and he wasn't trying to be, you know, famous or great or anything.

In his world, he would've been a philosopher and a teacher of philosophy.

But, you know, when God calls you, you have to answer.

And then all of a sudden he and daddy are reconnected in Montgomery, Alabama, and I can't tell you that story, but Dr.

Vernon Johns, a pastor of Dexter Avenue, brought him all together and Dr.

Johns was telling Uncle Martin what he wasn't ready for.

But because it was the days of segregation, Uncle Martin had driven Dr.

Johns and so he drove into my parents' house and Uncle Martin came up the walk and my dad said, he looked out and he saw in the light, he's like, "Oh my God, Martin my friend has come to my door."

And they came in and they sat down and they broke bread 'cause my mother made an incredible, you know, food because that's what my mother could do and they talked about the crisis of the Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama.

And then the following morning, Uncle Martin was nervous, really nervous.

And he called my dad who was the first Black pastor on the radio, first Black man on the radio.

And Uncle Martin said, "I'm scared."

And daddy said, "Now listen, what I need you to do, I need you to get down on your knees and I'm gonna get down on my knees and we gon' pray."

And my dad could pray.

And that's what he did, he prayed and he prayed and he lifted Uncle Martin up.

He said, "Now, I need you to go forward and get accepted as the pastor of Dex Avenue.

Now simultaneously, Dr.

Johns, the former pastor, was preaching that morning at my dad's church at First Baptist and Dr.

Johns was my dad's mentor.

But Dr.

Johns was old man and daddy wanted Uncle Martin and he gave him what he needed to do.

And even though the majority of the members were over at First Baptist to hear Dr.

Johns, Uncle Martin was so on fire, they offered it to him and he accepted.

And when I was a little girl, Caesar Chavez was my dad's friend, he was Uncle Martin's friend.

My dad said to me, "Donzaleigh, I need you to give up your most favorite food with your grapes."

And so I said, "Why?"

He said, "For Latino people, because they're being mistreated and there are people Donzaleigh."

And so I said, "Okay."

And I gave up my grapes when I was a little girl and I didn't eat grapes again until I was close to 40 years of age because Latino people weren't being treated fairly and they weren't getting a fair amount of money working in the fields because I don't know if you all understand, but in California, we feed America, we give you all of your fresh produce.

Maybe you can get your potatoes from Idaho, and you can get your oranges from Florida, but the rest of everything else you're gonna get from California.

That's the world that I grew up in.

This is the bus, and it was colored seating from the back.

And Rosa was arrested and Rosa was a secretary from Montgomery NAACP.

And my dad was the number two man at the NAACP.

And E.D.

Nixon had to go outta town.

He was a Pullman porter, you all know what the Pullman porters were.

The older people do, young people, you all don't know, he's that person that you greet when you're getting on the train, he takes your luggage and directs you to your seat, that's the Pullman porter.

And E.D.

Nixon was the head of that.

Asa Philip Randolph, who's responsible for the march on Washington, he was a Pullman porter as well.

Anyway, so he had to go outta town.

And so he said, "Ralph, we gotta do something."

And my dad said, "Okay."

And this would be my dad's third boycott.

My dad said to E.D.

Nixon, "Do me a favor, I need you to call my friend Martin who's new in town."

And before he could call daddy called and Uncle Martin said, "I can't do anything, I'm doing my dissertation."

And daddy's like, "No, no, no, no, no, you're gonna come with me.

I'll pick you up.

You're gonna go to these meetings."

And so Uncle Martin said, and it wasn't until that third mass meeting that Uncle Martin officially joined them.

The following morning, just so you all understand, after Rosa was arrested on December 2nd, my dad issued the call for the creation of the Civil Rights movement and that was before the Baptist ministers and that's a great thing about being a Baptist versus a Methodist.

When you're a Methodist... (laughs) when you are a Baptist, you can run your church, you can do what you need to do.

When you're a Methodist, you got to go through the bishop, right?

And so they were Baptist ministers and they was like, "This is what we need to do."

But it was the women, Joanne Robinson and the teachers and my dad at that point had been the dean, he was the outgoing dean of men at Alabama State University 'cause my dad thought that he was gonna spend his whole life in the educational system but God intervened.

And Uncle Martin said these words, "There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed outta the glittering sunlight of life's July and are left standing in the piercing chill of an alpine November."

You all know what an alpine November is because you live in an alpine November.

Work and fight until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream and with those words Black people took to the streets.

50,000 Black people took to the streets for the first time in the history of the United States of America.

And just so you understand, like Michelle Obama said, "I live in a house that was built by slaves and I know that they may try and take down part of the East Wing, but the rest of the sucker was built by the hands of my ancestors, Black people, slaves."

So yes, we've come a long way.

(audience applauding) Anyway, that's them, daddy and Uncle Martin, and Bayard Rustin who came down and introduced the idea.

And the horrible thing about that is they had to have him leave.

The Black ministers said he had to leave because he was, you know, openly homosexual and I think it's wrong to discriminate with somebody because of the way that God made them is not something that you study and decide you're gonna be that way, you come into the world that way and that's just the way you are and I don't want somebody to love somebody because I think they have to love a certain way, I think they need to be who they are, that's what Daddy and Uncle Martin taught me.

Anyway, that's daddy and that's him overseeing a crowd, and that standing room only there and you'll see those are women.

When you look at that photograph, those are women, women, women, women were the facilitators of change in America, not the men.

The Black men were scared, but the women were fearless.

And women are still fearless.

Yes.

And so we were hungry.

We had endured 244 years of slavery, nearly 100 years of Jim Crow segregation, that was 344 years of a white man telling you you're less than simply because of the color of your skin.

And don't you know God made us that way and this is the beautiful thing that I love about growing up with Uncle Martin and daddy, and the thing that they taught us was that, you know, while my sister's husband, his ancestors were living in caves wearing the hide of a bear on their backs because that's what they were up there in Denmark, my people had built the pyramids, we had hieroglyphics, we had running water.

We knew the power, we knew gold, we had created, we even took our knowledge, the Moors to Spain, and built where your ancestors were and made Spain beautiful, Black people did that.

We didn't learn a skill outta slavery, we already had skills long before.

- [Host] You can see her full keynote address on the Milwaukee PBS website.

You can also see the full Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr celebration on MATC's website.

- And that's our program for this month.

Please remember to check us out across all of our digital platforms.

For the "Black Nouveau" team, I'm Earl Arms, wishing you and yours a happy African American history Month.

(upbeat music)